So it is God, not his boss that Abdullah Ahmad Badawi listens to.

Perhaps the home minister's decision to free the reformasi detainees was made easier with Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad out of the country - he was getting a pat in the back, so he said, at the G8 summit in France.

Still, freedom comes rather unexpectedly. Apparently, the decision to free the reformasi detainees was made hours before the two-year detention order expired.

The hasty decision - made after Abdullah's late night arrival from a 10-day break in Australia - indicated that the government had originally resolved to keep the reformasi leaders behind bars.

The last-minute change of mind came, no doubt, because of political pressures from the anti-ISA movement.

This however was strenuously denied by Deputy Home Minister Zainal Abidin Zin. He said the government received 'favourable' reports on the conduct of the reformasi leaders while in detention.

How could that be?

No remorse

Just two weeks ago, the reformasi detainees were getting physical with their jailers over a small vegetable plot and a computer notebook.

Hishamuddin Rais' green patch - the result of two years of hard labour in the Kamunting detention camp - was destroyed as a punishment for defending a fellow detainee who was too sick to attend a court case.

He was later put in solitary confinement when he tried to prevent the guards from assaulting his cellmate, Tian Chua, during a raid to seize a laptop used for Tian's external course at a local university.

Both detainees have not renounced their reformasi activities. Indeed, they have vowed, time and again, to continue their struggle. Clearly, their freedom was not because of their 'good behaviour'.

But Zainal's spin did not stop there.

He said those released should, wait for this, be thankful to the government for "acting according to the law and regulations".

Surely, this is a perverse joke. Asking the detainees to show gratitude to their jailers is like asking a battered wife to be grateful to her husband for letting her out of the house.

No, Abdullah does not deserve a pat on the back. After all, he was the person who signed the initial detention order which robbed two years of the detainees' lives.

He bears sole responsibility for taking fathers away from their children, husbands away from their loved ones - and for Hishamuddin, taking him away, not only from his family, but also his much adored cats.

Powerful enemies

Who then to thank for their freedom?

Clearly, they are the families of the detainees, human rights organisations and supporters of the anti-ISA campaign - all of whom pressed on despite being told by the powers-that-be that nothing would move them.

Indeed, there were those who beseeched that they give up, that nobody cared, that they were irrelevant, that they should not rock the boat, and that they were better off remaining as a cog in the wheel.

Even when all appeared to be lost, the anti-ISA campaigners did not lose faith. For that, they should give themselves a pat in the back.

Said Irish philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Change will come, sooner or later. Whether we live to see it does not really matter. What's important is good men, and good women, should do something.